Controversial SNP plans to scrap a historic rule of Scots law designed to
prevent miscarriages of justice are “quite dangerous”, one of the country’s
most senior legal figures has warned.

Lord Hope of Craighead said he would be “very sad” to see the abolition of corroboration and Kenny MacAskill could pursue a “wiser” and less radical alternative.

He warned that getting rid of the rule could mean criminal accused being convicted on the basis of a confession that had been extracted by police illegally, a situation he described as “fundamentally wrong”.

Corroboration requires at least two pieces of evidence for a criminal conviction to succeed but has been blamed for low conviction rates in rape and domestic violence cases, where it is more likely to be one person's word against another's.

The intervention by Lord Hope, who recently retired as deputy president of the UK Supreme Court, buttressed the strong opposition among the legal profession about the change.

Mr MacAskill has insisted corroboration has “failed Scotland” by allowing offenders to get away with crimes committed in private or where there are no witnesses.

But Lord Hope, who was Scotland’s most senior judge between 1989 and 1996, told Holyrood magazine: “I just express concern that the proposal seems very far-reaching and, potentially, quite dangerous if you have a situation where somebody is at risk of being convicted on his own confession which I would have thought was absolutely fundamentally wrong in Scots law.

“It may be that the number of cases that go to trial now on confessions are comparatively few, but we developed our law of corroboration initially as a barrier against people being taken to court on a confession which had been extracted by torture.”

He acknowledged there was a “real problem” with cases where there are no other witnesses but added: “I would have thought a more selective way of dealing with the problem would be wiser than what I understand to be the solution that is being proposed just now.”

Mr MacAskill decided to abolish it following a review conducted by Lord Carloway, the Lord Justice Clerk, which said the rule was "archaic". He has said he was prepared to "ruffle a few feathers in the Faculty of Advocates" by abolishing it.

The Justice Minister has promised to increase protection against miscarriages of justice in place by increasing the majority of jurors who need to agree on a guilty verdict from eight to 10. This would be two thirds of a normal Scottish jury of 15.

However, sheriffs, lawyers and academics warned this standard was lower than in other countries without corroboration, where at least 80 per cent of jurors have to agree on a guilty verdict.

Two years ago Mr McAskill appeared to make a personal attack on Lord Hope, a former Lord Justice General of Scotland and Lord President of the Court of Session.

He claimed the UK Supreme Court judges’ only experience of Scotland was the Edinburgh Festival and they were riding roughshod over Scots law.